On Raphael B. Johnson and the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners

Left: Raphael B. Johnson

A reader of this blog yesterday brought to my attention the proposed appointment of convicted murderer Raphael B. Johnson to the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners. My initial reaction was one of shock, as the idea of an ex-con weighing in on police matters seemed ludicrous. At first glance, this seemed like a story from The Onion or The Daily Show.

Johnson spent twelve years in prison after his conviction of second-degree murder in the death of Johnny Havard in 1992. Yet at some point during his incarceration Johnson decided to make something useful with his life, earning a B.A. in legal administration and a Masters of Arts in liberal studies from the University of Detroit Mercy. Johnson is a well known motivational speaker, and he also achieved a measure of fame on the Maury Povich program with his challenges to teenaged misfits about turning around their lives.

Yet there is the question of the conviction, and while I am not among those who scoff at Mayor Dave Bing's unconventional appointment, I think that Raphael Johnson's criminal record should disqualify him from the position. I am concerned that Johnson's appointment to the board of commissioners might seem an insult to the officers who put their lives on the line every day to uphold the law, and even more importantly, the city of Detroit already faces significant problems in its international image. Why compound these PR challenges by inviting ridicule from the political pundits and late night comedians?

I commend Raphael B. Johnson for becoming an exemplary citizen after his earlier criminal past, but the Detroit Police Department would face unnecessary distractions if Johnson's appointment is approved. Mayor Bing should find a more appropriate position for Johnson if he wishes to utilize his unique skill set, perhaps in a role where Johnson works with at-risk teens or paroled felons.

On WikiLeaks, Afghanistan, and Server Limitations

I have been reading with some interest the news that an as-yet unnamed military sources leaked approximately 90,000 pages of classified documents related to the Afghanistan conflict to the website WikiLeaks. One of the reasons for my interest is that I am simultaneously teaching a class on the Vietnam War, and I was curious if this documentary leak would parallel the notorious Pentagon Papers that began being leaked in 1971.

The documents are collectively known as the Afghan War Diary, and these purportedly consist of internal U.S. military logs from the Afghanistan war. Unfortunately, public interest in the Afghan War Diary has been massive, and when I have attempted to access the site, I receive server overload error message like those in the screenshot on the left.

My suspicion is that the institutional intelligence of the U.S. government with regard to public relations has improved somewhat since the Vietnam War, and that there will be few instances of overt deception on the part of American military and political leaders uncovered in the Afghan War Diary, at least not of the magnitude of the flat-out lying by the Johnson and Nixon administrations depicted in the Pentagon Papers.

Unfortunately, the excessive demand on the WikiLeaks servers means that I will have to wait to examine the documents. I suppose, however, that I will learn little that I did not previously know about the Afghanistan conflict from the Afghan War Diary, and my semi-educated guess is that this cache of documents will have little bearing on U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

I also think the American populace is simply too indifferent toward the conflicts in Central and Western Asia for any documentary bombshells that might be uncovered in the Afghan War Diary to create a stir. Unfortunately, any antiwar sentiments in the United States today pale in comparison with the antiwar movement during the Vietnam conflict, and too many folks are more interested in the demagogic distractions of the present-day neo-McCarthyism to pay attention to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Baby Cardinal

While working in my gardens this afternoon, I noticed a cardinal darting in and out of a stand of sunflowers. I initially brought out the camera to catch an image of the red cardinal against the yellow sunflowers, but instead my eye became fixated upon the source of the cardinal's attentions: a baby cardinal was perched on one of the sunflower stalks.

I am not sure if the bird is yet able to fly, but I decided to bring my dogs inside to keep them from investigating the young chick's peeps. The dogs have a fondness for rousting birds, and my younger Puggle - whose name is Chauncey - likes to stalk birds and squirrels. I hope that my young avian friend will find safe passage to either adulthood or at least out of my yard.

On Parking Passes and Pleas for Leniency

Being without my university parking pass today (it was in another of our vehicles), I decided to make an advance plea to any parking enforcement employees who might stumble upon my permit-less vehicle. Pictured on your left is my humble-but-honest attempt at swaying the judgment of the BGSU parking enforcement folks.

While perhaps not as powerful as garlic in warding off vampires, my note did serve its purpose. At the very least, I returned to my vehicle to find no tickets or warnings.

Honesty, as they say, is indeed the best policy, and my lack of subterfuge and pretense may have worked in my favor. I do not intend to tempt the parking fates again, though this method might work for you in the future.

On Jimson Weed and Dirt Purchases

We purchased four cubic yards of dirt from a local supplier this spring to fill in some holes and level out some low areas in my yard and gardens. Along with the dirt came the requisite hidden seeds, and this spring and summer witnessed the appearance of a number of new-to-me weeds in my yard.

One of those weeds looked rather interesting, and I allowed a few specimens to grow after they produced some eye-catching white blossoms. I elected to let the plants live to see what sort of fruit they would produce, and over the course of the past few weeks I noticed the appearance of prickly seed pods on the plants.

This morning I decided to identify the mystery plants, and I was a bit disturbed to see that I had been allowing the poisonous Jimson weed (Datura stramonium) to set up shop in my garden. This plant is notorious in the U.S. for the occasional thrill-seeking teenagers who ingest it in pursuit of hallucinogenic kicks and wind up in the hospital. The drug information clearinghouse Erowid - not known for anti-drug polemics by any stretch - has this to say about Jimson weed intoxication:

Symptoms include mydriasis; cycloplegia; flushed, warm, dry skin; dry mouth; ileus; urinary retention; tachycardia; hyper or hypotension; delirium with hallucinations; jerky, myoclonic movements; choreoathetosis; hyperthermia; coma; respiratory arrest; rare seizures; and central stimulation followed by depression. Hallucinations are reported in as many as 83% of cases; typically they are simple visual images in natural colors, but infrequently also tactile hallucinations of crawling insects.

Even more to the point (and pretty funny in a dark way) was this quote from a one-time Jimson weed user:

I do not condone the recreational use of Datura at all. It’s horrible. So kids, there is no need to eat Datura. Stay the fuck away from it. And if you do decide to try it, even after reading this report, and or countless other train wreck experiences. Then you are as fucking dumb as I am.

Another one-off experimenter with Datura painted an even more grim picture:

I was out of it for 2 days, and comming down from it was very scary. It was a very evil feeling.I felt like I had sold my soul to the devil. I can't really explain it but it is not something that I can ever forget. If I could find a time machine, I would go back and undo the terrible mistake that I made when I collected evil from someones garden.

Admittedly there was a point in my life many years ago when I might have been reckless enough to ingest such a substance, especially if knowledgeable friends recommended it, but these days I do not even drink full mugs of coffee out of a desire to avoid caffeine jitters. Thus, it was with a sense of urgency that I returned to the yard to uproot these plants and rid my property of a potentially deadly menace.

Yet the Datura plants had the last laugh: even though I wore gloves when yanking out these dangerous weeds, water from last night's rains poured off the plants and went directly into my eyes. Now I get to fret for a few hours about whether there will be some residual eye irritation or even a small dose of imagining crawling insects.

So, if you plan to uproot Jimson weed, make sure your eyes are covered, or you might spend an afternoon wondering if you are about to start tripping.

Bees Getting Busy

I was wandering around the backyard on this rainy Sunday morning when I decided to take some pictures of a bumblebee visiting my sunflowers. Some of the image turned out better than this one, especially in terms of clarity, but when I was downloading the files I noticed that this image featured both a honeybee and a bumblebee.

I also liked the way the bumblebee looked more like a leaping anteater than a member of the bee genus Bombus. I snapped the picture just as the insect's wings went into a downstroke and the hind legs had just finished lofting the bumblebee into the air.

There are more productive ways to spend a Sunday morning than by taking pictures of bees, but when you are a geek like me, nature sometimes takes precedence.

Rays of the Sun

I took the accompanying photograph in between rounds of a series of thunderstorms that rumbled through the southern portion of Michigan's Wayne County last night. I liked the contrast between the blue skies, the black clouds, and the rays of light shining from the obscured sun.

The upper right-hand corner of the picture has the best rays, though my digital camera did not quite capture the full effect of the diffused sunlight.

A better image would have been achieved with this window of light and blue sky surrounded by the all-encompassing black clouds, but my efforts to catch such a panoramic image did not simultaneously produce the ray effect.

On Storm Fears and Media Silence

We spent the afternoon and early evening in the Detroit area visiting my grandfather, and there were some powerful storms that ripped through southern Wayne and northern Monroe counties. We became a bit worried when driving home about 7:30 PM, as the storms suddenly tracked to the southeast.

That is, following us toward Toledo.

The first picture was taken about 8:15 pm near exit 11 on Interstate 75 on the southern edge of Monroe, MI (my wife was driving and I was busy sticking the camera out the window for some cloud images). The skies suddenly darkened, and it was clear that a storm was impending. Even more ominous was the fact that our little dog Shadow - who freaks out at thunderstorms and senses their presence 10-15 minutes before humans can - crawled under the bench seat of our minivan.

Sure enough, by the time we hit Alexis and Detroit on the northern edge of Toledo, all hell was breaking loose. Rain came down in thick sheets, the sky lit up with bursts of lightning, and the roads were almost undriveable. Of course, Toledo's pathetic local radio stations had zero weather information, though I frantically scanned all stations in vain.

Even worse, the tornado sirens went off just a few minutes after we ran into the house. Strangely, none of the local stations had any coverage of the storm, and I was getting both frustrated and a bit panicky. Finally Robert Shiels of WTOL broke in just after 9:00 PM to say that local officials possessed the power to sound the sirens, but that there was nothing on his radar to indicate that a rotational cell was anywhere nearby.

It appears that sheriff's deputies in Providence, OH may have seen some rotation, but this appears to have been an error. While the storms were strong, it turns out that the greater threat to area residents was from flash flooding, as the storms dumped several inches of rain on the parched ground.

On Domestic Disarray and eBay Weasels

Pictured on your left is a section of my kitchen, an area torn apart so that contractors can run electrical conduit plus water, drain, and gas lines to the second floor of our house. The purpose of this heavy construction is to create a second floor laundry, a dream my wife has held for many years and for which we are now in the financial position to afford.

Still, I despise such disruptions while they are occurring, and the equipment noise and foot traffic around the house today has been considerable. In addition, my dogs are always high-strung and jittery with so much activity. I knew that this would be a poor day to engage in the contemplative work of syllabus writing and paper grading, yet I nonetheless insisted on engaging in these very activities.

Recipe for disaster, that.

After a few less-than-fully-productive hours, I decided my efforts would be better spent pulling weeds and occupying myself in other garden-related activities. The mail carrier brought me some English ivy plants I ordered from an eBay vendor, but unfortunately the jackass seller sent me cuttings instead of the "well-rooted plants" advertised.

I planted the ivy anyways, figuring that it would be a waste of time to chase down $10 from this seller. Had I looked more closely at the seller's ratings, I would have noticed a spate of recent negative comments from dissatisfied buyers, but I figured that English ivy was pretty hardy and that even a lousy seller could not screw up such a small sale.

I was wrong, but I was also distracted for a few hours, and in the meantime the construction marched along. Perhaps the lousy eBay deal provided me an outlet for my energy on a day when little other work was going to be successful.

On Color-Coordinated Gardens

In something akin to a happy accident, one of my shade gardens happened to become awash with pink hues this week. The sources of pinkness in this image are Phlox paniculata (summer phlox) and Echinacea purpurea (Eastern purple coneflower).

The sudden changing of the colors sparked a thought in my head, which was that it might be possible to design a garden that changed colors every few weeks. If I planted perennials of similar colors that bloomed about the same time, I could theoretically synchronize a color show in certain areas of my yard.

To do so would require me to keep a log of the blooming dates of the various plants in my yard (although I could also use the many images and blog posts I have generated over the years to speed up the process). Then there would be the relocation of existing plants, purchase of new perennials, and fine-tuning of the blooming schedules to keep like-hued plants near each other at the correct times via the use of my laptops and a Linksys router.

On second thought, I will just enjoy the happy accident for the moment.

Film Review: Inception

The buzz surrounding Christopher Nolan's visually stunning and deceptively cerebral film Inception began many weeks ago, and I gradually found waning my resistance to shelling out first-run ticket cash. Over the past few days enough friends on Facebook raved about the film that my wife and I decided to venture out to take in this movie.

Inception was easily the best film I viewed this year, though admittedly this has not exactly been a banner year for Hollywood. I found Inception to be intellectually challenging, and I had to work to keep up with Nolan's efforts to distort and bend reality.

There were a few moments where my ability to suspend disbelief wavered, especially the way that the character Ariadne (played by Ellen Page) seemed to know much more than a rookie dream extractor/architect should know. Of course, I know nothing about dream extraction, so I suppose I cannot fairly critique someone more skilled than I in matters oneirological.

Part heist film, part science fiction, and part five-dimensional chess game, Inception is well worth the first-run cash, and you will leave with more questions than answers. For some folks, such a film is frustrating, but for those filmgoers who like to be challenged, Inception works on more levels than most films you will see this decade.

On Daisies and Summertime

Nothing says "summer" to me like the appearance of daisies in my yard, and even the efforts of my dogs to trample and uproot the daisies we have planted never seem to kill them off. We had only one group of daisies reappear this year, so we picked up a few more planters of these bright flowers and planted them today.

I remember as a child picking wild daisies in a variety of locations and presenting them to my mom and grandmother in an effort to either curry favor or mitigate some egregious sin I committed. OK, I might have picked the flowers because I was just being a sweet child that day, but chances are I was up to some sort of shenanigans.

The very colors of the common daisy - its brilliant white and radiant yellow hues - mirror the brightest summer days, and I think a person would have to be comatose not to experience at least a smidgen of good humor from gazing at daisies. Moreover, these flowers stick around for quite a few weeks, making them a bargain in terms of dollars per day of blooming season, and they multiply over time to create walls of color for the patient gardener.

If only my dogs shared my zeal for the daisies.